evergreen
by that's bogus sir
Summary: "Does it ever feel like you're suffocating? Loving someone so much?" yes. and it hurts like hell. — gumiku, implied kailenrin.


otherwise known as let's pretend i don't overuse italics and useless details and _thoughts_ and uhhhhh it's still christmas, yeah? i mean, hhhhh i wrote this in december, at least started to, anyway, but then got lazy and gave up. but _then_ i had a snow day and while sitting around doing nothing, this. happened. it serves little purpose other than to establish domestic personality hcs for the losers in a very normal verse. yknow? yknow. so 6k words of stuff. feast! hopefully future stuff i post here won't be nearly as long. no promises tho.

rated T for swearing, mentions of child abuse, and mental illness.

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 **evergreen**

It's three in the afternoon on Christmas Eve when Gumi decides as she's drumming her bruised knuckles against Miku's bare thigh that they're getting a Christmas tree. While often Gumi's proposals — what Miku calls proposals, anyway, because Gumi doesn't quite ask questions or suggest ideas as much as she demands them, nowadays — are raw and edged with a dismantling irritation, this statement is feather soft, her voice gentle how it hasn't been for months. She doesn't even seem to realize she's spoken until Miku spares her a tilted glance that she meets halfway. Her eyebrows furrow, then raise in distant understanding.

Miku sets her book to one side. Her hands occupy themselves by piecing instead through Gumi's hair. She works her jaw a moment, trying to fathom a good-natured reply, but the best she can come up with is, "There aren't really going to be a lot of nice trees left."

"Humor me," Gumi says, closing her eyes. She waves a flippant hand at the ceiling. "Humor yourself. You've wanted a tree since November."

"You haven't wanted a tree since before I met you," Miku points out. There's an accidental crudeness behind it that makes her flinch, but Gumi not reacting to it at all stings almost worse, somehow. She is still with her head in Miku's lap, looking infinitely tired, as if she's never slept in her life and will never learn to sleep again. Anxiety sets Miku's stomach on fire. To derail her already downward spiraling thoughts, she asks, "What changed your mind, then?"

Gumi's shoulders lift. "You did," she says, like it's the only answer, not just the easiest one; like with two words she didn't just steal the fire from Miku's stomach and bring it fearlessly to her heart.

When Miku doesn't say anything, Gumi opens her eyes. She's almost smiling — _almost_ — but the near thing is not the whole thing and Miku wonders what it will take from her to only bend and never break from a lifetime of watching this. She tucks Gumi's bangs behind her ears. Gumi spreads thin, dark fingers over Miku's pale thigh and squeezes.

And this, Miku thinks—

This could nearly kill her.

She bows her head, hair spilling a messy curtain around Gumi's face, and rests her palm on the freckles dusting Gumi's cheek. "You could convince me do anything," she admits delicately, treading thin ice she's far too heavy to be testing her weight on. "You know that?"

"I know that," Gumi says. "We're getting the tree."

The tree won't have time to settle by the time they get it here. Miku doesn't think they have a dish to put it in or ornaments to decorate it with. They certainly don't have a star. Gumi's memories of Christmas are far from fond, farther from loving, and Miku seldom pushes her luck talking about it. She doesn't put up decorations, she doesn't string lights, prohibits mistletoe, ensures there's a lack of carols and specials, and now, _now_...

"Of course we're getting the tree," Miku tells her.

Gumi's tired smile almost reaches her eyes, this time.

.

"Do you have the keys?" Miku asks once they get outside. She's donned a sweater, one of Gumi's various colorless hoodies and a jacket in the time it took Gumi just to find the keys. But Miku's a patient waiter, and so she laced up her boots by the entryway while patiently waiting for Gumi to get dressed herself. Miku had to remind her twice to grab a coat.

"Yes," Gumi returns, "I have the keys." As proof, she spins the key ring around her index finger, closes it tight in her fist. Miku without holding them can feel their significance, can feel the ridges pressing firm through her skin, feel the metal thrum along to the rhythm of the engine. Without touching Gumi, she can feel that familiar heat radiating between them, feel a lonely heartbeat, hear it and taste it, too. Without thinking much if at all, Miku dreams she unwinds the world and its strings upon strings of tangled thread.

"You're okay to drive," Miku says, aiming not to pose it like a question. She's asked a plethora today; Gumi's being stretched thin from the effort of giving them civil, simple responses. That quiet lull to her voice has yet to fade. Her energy's on overload just having gotten out of the apartment. Miku should hold her hand, chapped and scabbed red because she won't wear gloves, but she's nervous. She doesn't get why the anxiety's biting her and won't let go.

Quirking a brow at her, Gumi says, "Yes, I'm okay to drive," and books it to her battered old pick-up truck. Miku follows, hands buried in the pockets of her bulky blue jacket. She wrestles herself into the passenger's seat and leans her head against the window when she gets the door closed. Gumi hops into the driver's seat and jams the keys into the ignition.

Beneath them, the truck roars to life. Miku straps her seatbelt on and buckles it, nudging Gumi to do the same. She wordlessly does.

And as she's pulling out of the complex lot, she wets her lips and breaks a self-inflicted silence to say, "My mom called me last night."

Had Miku been driving, she would've crashed the car.

Her dislike for Gumi's mother is a train wreck: crushed fragments of something splintered, something broken, a dangerous eye candy that has Miku tumbling back for it, despite how tragic and how horrible it is, how it hurts to look directly at it, smoke in her eyes, burning up her throat. She could rummage through the rubble in hopes to find some lost remnant of peace in the mess, but it's too late for that, too late to repair the damage that has been done. Impossible to reverse it.

Gumi's mother crossed a line she shouldn't have with unforgivable, ruthless confidence. Does she expect Gumi to forgive her? Does she expect that of Miku? The woman is vile. She's a disaster that sprouted two legs and taught itself to walk. She doesn't deserve their sympathy. They don't deserve her catastrophe, dragging itself along at her heels with every stumbling step; they don't deserve her misplaced regret.

Miku's lungs dissolve. The last time she called had to have been years ago, and the last time, that _last_ time—

"Miku," Gumi interrupts. Slowly, her hand drifts over the center console, and she strokes Miku's thigh through her frayed excuse for jeans, reassuring. "Miku, hey. It's okay. Come back."

That's all it takes. The tension leaves Miku's shoulders, her breath evening out, vision refocusing. Gumi doesn't reject her when she rushes to fill the gaps between Gumi's fingers with her own. They sit in that frigid quiet for awhile. It takes a couple of minutes for Miku to gather the strength to prompt, "She called you?"

"Yeah," Gumi replies, with such effortless nonchalance that Miku's body heaves.

Weeks ago, Gumi couldn't have heard the mere mention of her mother without cracking her knuckles on their rebound off the wall, but suddenly the old, swelling anger is gone, and so is the riled sentiment. There's an empty canvas where there used to be jagged streaks of red watercolor. And Miku knows this is better than the alternative, that this is the aim of Gumi's medicine, that this is what Gumi's doctor tells them, but she's no less afraid than she was at the start.

"She _called_ you?"

"You were asleep," Gumi says, so lightly it's hard to hear her. Her intonation suggests a question Miku doesn't know the answer to.

"You could've woken me up," she whispers. "I wouldn't have been upset."

Gumi considers this, then hesitantly corrects herself. "You hate her."

Miku looks at Gumi, startled, tracing her bruised knuckles with the pad of her thumb, eyebrows furrowed. "She hurt you," Miku says cautiously. It's been two years, maybe, since Gumi has mustered even half the courage it takes to open up like this; Miku doesn't want to push, but it will do them no good to withdraw, either. She continues, "I grew up _watching_ her hurt you, Goom. Of course I hate her."

A reverent, shaky expression slants Gumi's face, rattling her exhale, before it settles back to smooth neutrality. Her grip on Miku's hand tightens. She says, "I don't think I could hate her," with such unease she cringes. "She's still my _mom_ , Miku. She's fucked but she's still my mom."

"Just because she gave birth to you doesn't make her your mother," Miku says and her hold around Gumi's hand is no longer gentle, no longer sweet, for she is terrified and this wrought-iron clutch Gumi has on her is all that's keeping her from floating away. "You don't owe her anything."

Gumi chews her lip, mutely denying this.

"Goom," Miku whispers, mouth stuttering, the words caught in a sticky web somewhere. "Gumi, angel. She beat you within an inch of your life. You don't owe her _anything_."

"But," Gumi protests, she _protests_ , she digs the knife of never letting go into herself and Miku can't pull it out fast enough, so here Gumi is, bleeding out, bleeding herself empty, and she's gone. It feels like they've both gone. Gumi continues uncertainly, "She _raised_ me. She was raunchy, and she was awful, and she drank shitty booze and never fucking cleaned up after herself, but at the end of the day, at the end of it, I had a warm bed to sleep in, I had food to eat in the morning, I…"

The list seems to run dry. Gumi shakes her head. "Besides," she tries, "it's the holidays, and she's probably all alone, sitting by herself and fucking... I don't know, waiting? Mourning? She's all alone. What am I supposed to do, ignore her? She's my _mom_. She's... She _called_ me."

Miku watches the desperation dissolve to confusion, the confusion to muffled fury, then—

"She called me."

Blood stains Gumi's lip red. She's oblivious to having bitten through the skin. The dejected green of her eyes has grown streaked through with gloss and water. She teeters on the verge of crushing Miku's hand, or maybe it's Miku on the verge of crushing hers.

"It's so fucking stupid," is what Gumi says at last, choked like the words are fists wrung around her neck. "I was in the hospital for a week and a half, waiting to see her, because I swore, Miku, I _swore_ this would be the time she apologized and everything went normal and I could have a mom who didn't—" She wrenches her hand from Miku's and gesticulates wildly, then explodes into tears when she can't finish and slams her fist on the steering wheel once, twice.

There is the anger, so much more overwhelming when it is a spark quick to ignite amid a fire with no flame. But the anger dies fast; what's left is ash and dust and disintegrate.

Gumi stubbornly wipes her face. "Fuck," she laughs without really laughing. She pulls the car over, tries to compose herself but doesn't and can't. "Fuck."

Miku touches Gumi's shoulder and holds her hand. The world with its silence is deafening. She doesn't know what to do, and she doesn't know what to say, if she's allowed to argue or if her will is to comfort or what. She doesn't know.

Until suddenly, she does.

"Look at me," Miku says, and when Gumi refuses, sniffing and glaring at the window, Miku cups her face with both palms and turns it so that they stare at each other, so that there is nowhere else for Gumi to look but _here_. She shuts her eyes and grits her teeth to bear it, right hand splayed over Miku's left, letting delicate thumbs brush her tears away. "Gumi."

Gumi opens her eyes.

"Your mother isn't going to change. She's using this timing to take advantage of you because she _knows_ the influence she has on you. She knows where to hurt you. If you let her back into your life, she's going to hurt you again. Her goal is to _hurt_ you."

"She told me," Gumi gets out, spluttering, trembling, the seconds to a reset in her mood counting down, down, down, "she misses me, said I should come home tomorrow, and asked about you, said I didn't fucking _need_ —"

"Don't think about what she said," Miku says softly. "She's lying to you. Whatever she said, she's lying to you. You have to put it out of your head, and be strong."

"I don't know _how_ ," Gumi sobs, and she convulses with a violent jerk, so Miku reaches blindly and winds Gumi in her arms, awkwardly cradling her over the center console. She feels hot breath against her neck, pets Gumi's hair, traces familiar patterns, the crushing weight of fire in her heart a rampage. "I don't know how to be strong."

"Yes, you do."

"I don't."

"You do. You're so strong. You're the strongest person I know, Gumi. You've made it this far, haven't you?"

To this, Gumi only swallows, as if disbelieving.

"It's okay to be upset. It's okay to feel this. It's okay to let her go," Miku says. "It's okay. You're going to be okay. You are. You're so, _so_ strong."

"I'm going to be okay," Gumi repeats, her crying beginning to melt, her breathing steadying itself out.

She sounds like she might actually believe it, and Miku smiles for all the instances where Gumi couldn't by herself.

"Of course you are," Miku whispers, kissing the crown of her hair. "Now, let's go buy that effing tree."

.

"These trees are shit," Gumi says as soon as they arrive at the lot and make their way toward the tents.

"Thank you," Miku says. "I grew them myself."

Gumi rolls her eyes — puffy and red from crying, such a strange, foreign sight on her — and shoves Miku very weakly, but Miku isn't expecting it and topples into the nearest bank of snow on her ass. "Ouch," she says, lame as ever. " _Ouch_."

"Sorry," Gumi replies immediately, blushing a vicious shade of pink when she offers Miku a hand and hoists her to her feet. "For pushing you. Not for insulting the trees."

"You're the one who wanted a tree in the first place. I told you they weren't going to be nice!" Miku giggles to show she's joking and wipes snow off her coat, peering up briefly to see a knot in Gumi's expression. Her giggle breaks apart and fragments to a worried frown. Is it the car ride? Images of her mother, or else doubtful thoughts about this Christmas debacle altogether, or—

Miku doesn't get a word out; Gumi beats her to it, saying, "The lights are really pretty."

The lights? Miku looks out over the lot. Thinks, _Oh._

Most of them are blue, strung over telephone poles and tents, but a patch of white and gold ones wind their way through the mess, up trees billowing their branches toward the sky. Someone's strung orange lanterns around at random, and luminaries light the path on either side leading to the primary tent, where a tall man Miku thinks she recognizes stands. He's undoing a series of lights in his tent, cheery and chatting idly to a teeny, tiny girl beside him.

She glances at Gumi and stops caring about the lights, because her green hair is wild and the lights reflect an unnatural, stunning gleam in her eyes, and the cold chews the truth that she'd been crying, the cut on her lip is swollen but not unattractive, which is weird, and she's almost, _almost_ smiling, she's almost there, and her bare fingers lace through Miku's, squeezing.

"Yeah," mumbles Miku, who hasn't spared the lights another glance. "They are."

As they walk briskly toward the tall man and teeny, tiny girl, Gumi doesn't release Miku's hand. Miku bumps their shoulders and Gumi snorts and blushes deeper, but keeps holding and holding and holding, like she's too scared to let go. And that's okay.

"Hello," Miku greets the man, her breath fanning out a cloud of misty vapor. "We're looking for a tree?"

"Well," the man replies, moving to face her, "I would hope so— ah. _Miku_?"

Miku blinks. And grins. "Kaito?" she asks. "I thought I recognized you!"

Kaito laughs, somewhat sheepish. "Ah, yeah. I'm hard to miss! Um, you remember Rin?" He ruffles the girl's tidy blonde bob, and she pouts, swatting his wrist. "Len was here a moment ago, but…" He seems to spot Gumi and startles. "Oh! Megumi, I—"

"Just Gumi, now," Miku interjects. She practically feels Gumi's tension unfurl, feels her sickening nerves dispatch. There's something in spotting their childhood friends that gives Gumi a rush of discomfort Miku is swift to soothe. The use of her full name tends to worsen the blow. "How are you, though?" Miku quips, aiming to push the trajectory of this conversation elsewhere. "Both of you."

Kaito's gaze lingers on Gumi for another moment before he gets the sense to focus on Miku, and his chipper smile airily returns. "Not bad! I mean, we got an apartment together, so…"

"With Len," Rin adds. She sips a hot beverage from a styrofoam cup and shrugs, corner of her mouth tugged into a smile.

"That's! Wow!" Feeling stupid that she hadn't guessed their circumstances sooner, Miku blurts, "Us, too. Gumi and I."

Rin's eyebrows fly way up. "Where?" she asks.

"The corner by the convenience store Yukari works at," Gumi says abruptly, sounding unenthusiastic. Her eyes drift to the lights more often than they do Kaito and Rin, not that Miku blames her; she's tired, the fight in her getting louder, and her mood's reverted to that unnerving stability. No doubt she'd rather be at home asleep while Miku makes dinner.

"Kurage's?" Kaito suggests.

Gumi nods.

He laughs again, not unpleasantly. "We checked the listings there, but it got crowded so fast. Shame! We could've been neighbors!"

"I wish we knew where Len was," Rin says, a dismissal that has Kaito scoffing. "He would've loved to see you, Gumi."

Gumi flinches like she's been hit and says, "Maybe. I'm gonna go browse." She releases Miku's hand and peters out of view, looping the aisles of lacking pine trees beneath other light-strewn tents, her boots leaving messy imprints in the snow.

Kaito watches her go. To Miku, he says, "She's…" and trails off, tugging the tail end of his scarf.

"Getting better," Miku fills in for him. "Recovery is a slow process."

"Yes," Rin agrees, "definitely."

And Miku shuts her mouth before she can ask Rin how she would know, remembering Len in high school, battered and broken and wanting to be put together so badly, no words describing that need, and Gumi his replica, the both of them products of terrible fathers, worse mothers, ugly homes. It aches, faraway and glazed over, barely there but _there_ , and the lights flicker, flicker. Miku sees Gumi's blood on a napkin and her mother in a chair, drinking her life to waste, " _Don't mind her_ ," and—

Flicker.

Reality stitches a map and Miku says, finding her place, "She's taking kind of poorly to her meds. Mood stabilizers? Yeah. Her doctor's super sweet, and he's been a huge help, but it... doesn't change that I get anxious, sometimes. Always fretting though I know I _shouldn't_." She scratches her jaw. "I'm so adjusted to pretending Christmas doesn't exist with her, but she took an interest in the tree, and... I don't know. I worry."

"Recovery is a slow process," Rin echoes. "And a nerve-wracking one. Worrying is all well and good, but it's also well and good to step back a few steps and let her resolve some of her issues on her own. Not alone," she adds when Miku makes to cut her off, "just... separately. There are things not even you can fix, Miku."

Miku nibbles impassively at her lip, itching her jaw, still. "I guess," she says. "It's not as though my goal is to _fix_ her. That's a bit much. What I want is just to—"

" _Miku_."

She jolts around at her name and spots Gumi hovering in one of the tents, fidgeting with a tree that can't possibly be much taller than Rin, or by those means, five feet. Gumi herself has at least ten inches on it, and Miku finds she's a little enamored at the picture; Gumi scowling at a pine tree as though it's going to enact a war, stray snowflakes caught in the silk of her lashes, hands bright red and white and peeling, her shoulders poised to defend herself.

"Does it ever feel like you're suffocating?" Miku asks without thinking it, unsure of who she's addressing as she fixates on Gumi, on the idea of her, the fiction of her, the fake of her. "Loving someone so much?"

"Yes," Kaito and Rin say in tandem, fond.

Miku sighs, dizzy, her chest hot and fuzzy and her vision stained in a blur of _Gumi_. "If that's the case, then," she says, slipping her wallet free from her pocket, "how much for the tree?"

"Three thousand," Rin replies, sipping her drink.

Miku gives her a wad of yen and beckons to Gumi, who obediently brings the tree over, muttering what might be, "Fucking sap."

"You could wear gloves," Miku comments.

"Not that," Gumi huffs, accepting help from Kaito when he takes the tree and starts heaving it toward the truck, laying it gently in its snow-damp bed. "You."

"Me?" Miku feigns offense, gasping and putting her fingers to her mouth. "I am no sap!"

 _Does it ever feel like you're suffocating?_

"You don't smell much better than it."

 _Yes._

"Sap smells _good_! What're you talking about?"

 _It hurts like hell._

They jostle each other and get Rin laughing, and as Kaito swings back he shoots them a knowing, appreciative sort of smile that has Miku walking on air and through it. She wraps her arm around Gumi's waist and puts her weight on her heels, Gumi relaxing to the pressure, supporting her. "Thank you," Miku says, and she hopes that Kaito and Rin are aware she means that for more than just the tree.

"Of course," Kaito says. He playfully punches Miku's shoulder. "Keep in touch with us, yeah? We live by the school, second room, third floor. Come visit any time! No forgetting."

"I won't, I won't," Miku snorts, ducking from his attempt to pinch her cheek. "Forget, that is. Tell Len we said hi!"

"Can do," Rin says, and she waves eagerly as Gumi whirls them around and heads them off to the truck. They clamber in, buckling, and Gumi fumbles to fish the keys out her pocket, but flicks the ignition to life once she nabs them, breathing her relief aloud. She doesn't appear to have a rushing intention to leave because she sits there, gripping the wheel, concerningly concentrated.

"Goom?" Miku asks. "Come back."

"I'm here," Gumi says. "Just thinking."

"About?"

"You." Gumi drums her fingers. "How comfortable you are with them, even though it's been, like. Three years. How weird you are." Drums her fingers, drums her fingers. Then wrenches them closed around the wheel. "How much I love you."

"I love you, too," Miku responds, and the quiet that follows is earth-shattering. She shifts to look at Gumi. "I'm serious," she says.

Gumi doesn't meet her gaze. "So am I," she says. "It's not... easy, for me. Doing it, or admitting it, but... You do so much for me. And the least I could do is tell you that it's... everything, to me. You're everything. I wouldn't have gotten this far if it weren't for you. I wouldn't — I wouldn't be _half_ as strong. I wouldn't be Gumi." She looks at Miku to finish thickly, "I wouldn't be anyone."

"But you are someone," Miku whispers. "You made yourself who you wanted to be. You're the best someone."

"That," Gumi points out, flushing, "is an exaggeration."

"Not to me, it's not."

"Not to you, huh," Gumi laughs, without really laughing. "Okay."

They peel out into the road, and when Gumi taps Miku's thigh, Miku gets the memo and twists their fingers together.

 _Does it ever feel like you're suffocating?_

Yes.

But it doesn't hurt so badly, anymore.

.

On their way home, they stop at a department store to buy ornaments, lights and a dish for their tree, though Gumi remains ornery in not participating in any official Christmas-related decisions, then at a coffee shop to get hot beverages, maybe feeling inspired by Rin's. Miku goes inside to order herself a matcha green tea latte and Gumi a hazelnut hot chocolate. She pipes up about a box of daifuku mochi, too, seeing as her stomach's growling, and there isn't much to eat at home. The barista politely obliges.

Once she's paid, Miku picks up their things and heads outside, where it's started to snow harder, the dark sky hefting white powder to the asphalt. It's already clinging to the windshield. Miku isn't sure whether to smile or groan, so she chooses the former and jumps into the passenger side, handing Gumi her drink and putting the pastry box on the center console between them.

"Snacks," Gumi muses.

"Yep," Miku agrees, warmth seeping through her gloves from her latte. "Daifuku. What better way to spend Christmas Eve than by _not_ cooking?"

"Sleeping," Gumi says.

"No."

Gumi parks in the apartment lot, considering their situation for a moment. She lofts a brow at Miku. "So, you know how to get the tree inside," Gumi says, not phrasing it as a question.

"Uh," says Miku, who did not think this far ahead.

It takes effort and sheer willpower, but after an hour or so passes, they successfully have the tree secured in its dish, Miku working on filling it with water as Gumi brings the last of their decorations inside, pastries sitting unattended on the kitchenette counter. Plastic bags litter the floor, Gumi crushes her styrofoam cup and flings it in the trash, and Miku rises, dusting off her jeans. She glances at the wall, and is surprised that the clock only reads six in the evening.

"I figured it was later," she says.

Gumi strips out of her coat, shoes and pants, leaving on nothing but her baggy tshirt and high-knee socks before she promptly collapses half-naked on the couch, box of pastries in her lap. "I figured it was earlier," she replies, popping the box's lid off.

"Mm." Miku cranks the heat in the apartment up a few notches, and contemplates her stance on clothing for a moment, then decides to mimic Gumi; she strips out of her jacket, bra, jeans and shoes but leaves her sweater and Gumi's hoodie, as well as her fuzzy Hello Kitty socks because they're cozy, and she likes them. "Hopefully the tree settles overnight," she says, snatching her latte from the coffee table and throwing herself down at Gumi's hip. "That'll give us time to decorate it tomorrow."

Gumi nods agreement and plucks mochi from the box, biting into it, giving a hum of approval and feeding a bite to Miku, too. They turn on the television, doing more cuddling and eating and drinking than watching, but it's good, and it's comfortable, and Gumi is calm, she's calm, and—

"Crap," Miku mumbles. "You have a dose due."

The reaction's instantaneous; Gumi affects disgust, insisting, "I can skip this one."

"You can't skip any dose," Miku replies tersely, kissing her forehead. "It'll just make you feel worse."

Gumi's resistance doesn't last long. Miku untangles them from each other and meanders into the kitchenette, water in a Solo cup and Gumi's medication in her right fist. As she's going back to the parlor, a phone rings, and Gumi grumbles a disoriented, "S'mine."

Miku sets the water and medication on the coffee table. Gumi lifts her phone out of the couch cushions, glancing at the screen, apparently disliking whatever it is she sees; she straightens and makes a weak, strangled noise in her throat, her eyes the size of moons.

"My mom," she says cautiously. "My _mom_."

If blood could run any hotter, Miku's would've reached a boil. She feels herself simmering, the thought of Gumi's mother ruining another part of Gumi's life impossible, unlikely, enough to push her past a fever pitch. Her heart thrums. Fire claws her ribs apart. Her hands. The anxiety pools heavy in her stomach.

"No," she says. She drops to her knees and stuffs herself between Gumi's legs, holding her wrists. "No. Don't answer. Do not give her the satisfaction of you answering."

"But—"

" _No_ ," Miku stresses. "No, angel. Don't answer. And if she leaves a voicemail, you delete it and you don't listen to it, okay? This woman is not your family. This woman is not your _mother_." She waits until Gumi declines the call and puts the phone aside to say, "She chose this timing very specifically, Gumi. This is manipulation of vulnerability. This is her dragging you down. This is her trying to make you unhappy because she can't handle the fact you turned out so nicely without her being there to hurt you. Okay?"

Gumi flounders for awhile; Miku expects the _protest_ , braces for it. Then, though, Gumi takes Miku's hands off her wrists and squeezes them, and she just nods, a little bounce of her chin. "Okay," she says, fussing teeth against her lip. "Put my phone in the other room. I'll take my meds. And then I — want to talk to you."

Unpromising as that seems, Miku smiles as genuinely as she can and kisses Gumi's temple, saying, "Alright," getting to her feet. She strokes through Gumi's hair once, twice, then takes the phone and tucks it beneath one of the pillows in their shared room. It doesn't feel like it's enough, so she goes to turn it off, spotting a voicemail — two — that pressure her further, spitting acid on her heart, raging the fire, and off the phone is, off it is, under the pillow, ignored.

Miku returns to the parlor. The television is still on but muted. The Solo cup is drained. The medicine has been swallowed (or so Miku is righteous to believe). Gumi is on the couch, drumming her fingers on the coffee table, not stopping when Miku sits beside her. Not stopping when Miku rests her head on her shoulder. Not stopping when Miku says, "Talk to me."

Not stopping, but saying patiently, "I was six the first time she hit me."

Miku doesn't say a word.

She was six the first time her mom hit her.

"Backhanded me, actually," Gumi says, "over extra soup. It was after dad left. I think seeing me being greedy made her realize without him she couldn't even feed me, never mind raise me. I remember how the blood tasted in my mouth better than I can remember our first kiss. She was so _mad_. And," Gumi changes the pattern in her drumming, "you remember when I was in the hospital?"

"Yeah," Miku whispers, because how could she forget? Gumi's mother broke a bottle over her head, choked her on the floor, crushed her left hand, swelled her eyes for _weeks_ , without an apology. Without ever being charged.

"Not the time you're thinking of." Gumi's lips purse a thin white line. "Earlier. She dislocated my shoulder and broke my wrist. You signed my cast first."

Miku blinks. She'd signed, _Get well soon!_ , too, just for kicks. Gumi hadn't stopped gushing about that signature. Hadn't stopped gushing about Miku. "I remember," she says. They'd been so young. So little. Just kids, bright-eyed and innocent and destroyed. "I remember."

"For Christmas the next year, you bought me a sweater. It was green, with the orange buttons up the front? And Kaito got me new sneakers, 'cause I wore my others one dead three years straight from walking to and from school in them. And Rin got me expensive chocolate, Len got me comic books, and…" Her fists clench. The drumming ceases. "I pitched a _fit_."

"You punched a wall and wouldn't let me bandage your hand because you were so busy yelling," Miku says. "You made us refund the gifts."

"Yeah. I didn't — my mom spoiled Santa for me the same year she hit me, first, so... Christmas overall was on the outs. No tree. No decorations. No lights." Gumi's palm eases release, and Miku puts her palm atop it. "The year I got the cast, we were arguing over going to see the Christmas lights downtown. I'd... I mean, Rin — she talked nonstop about them, showed pictures, and they were just... awesome, you know? But my mom hated when I asked for things, even just this, and — overreacted. Thought if I was in the hospital, I couldn't ask for anything but to get better." Gumi taps five times into Miku's hand. "That's why…"

"Why Christmas started to be so hard," Miku suggests.

"Yeah," Gumi says again. "Broke as shit, too. I couldn't afford to get you guys gifts either, and my temper was... _me_ , I guess, back then. I couldn't understand. I got angry instead." She shrugs. "I'm not angry now."

"No," Miku says, thinking about the car ride today. "You're not."

"So," Gumi continues, "the tree. The lights. It's too late for gifts, but... Christmas stuff, you know? Maybe pop in and see Kai and them tomorrow. See the lights downtown. That... kind of thing."

Miku is taken aback so far she has to count to three to take in a normal breath. In the softest voice she's ever heard herself manifest, she asks, "You're sure? What changed your mind?"

Gumi smiles, breathtaking and all-consuming, the fire dragged from Miku's heart to those lips. That smile.

"You did," she says. "You always do."

Miku doesn't know why she starts to cry, but she does.

.

The bed is warm. Tomorrow, there will be food to eat. The tree will have settled, and they'll string it with lights and ornaments. Miku will buy Gumi that sweater, and those sneakers, that chocolate, those comics. More daifuku mochi. More lattes, and hot cocoa. More kisses. She has her face in Gumi's neck, fingers curled in her shirt, Gumi's arms around her back, their chests rising and falling in sync. The snow flurries outside. They'll be lucky to get as far as Kaito's place when the sun rises. It's going to be so cold.

Midnight ticks by. Miku cracks an eye open, shifts, and accidentally shakes Gumi awake. She whines, yanks the blanket from Miku's waist up to her shoulders and mumbles, "Go to sleep."

"I can't," Miku whispers. She shifts, shifts, shifts, straddles Gumi's hips and brackets either side of her face with her arms, which gets Gumi better than just awake. She laces a crown behind Miku's neck and cranes her head to bump noses. Miku's hair is a waterfall spilling around Gumi's matted green nest, and they smile, even if Gumi's is clouded, even if Miku's is expectant. "It's Christmas."

"Is it?" Gumi says bluntly. "Well." She cards a hand up into Miku's hair and tugs her down by the fistful, meshing their lips together. It feels like music plays when she does. The fire in Miku's heart shrieks, embers scarring her lungs, and she's suffocating, suffocating, and it hurts like hell but it's a good kind of hurt, it's the hurt that reminds her she is here, this is real, they are real and here they are, alive.

Miku kisses Gumi like her life depends on it, like it's the first and last thing she's ever done, will ever do. Fireworks flash and the earth rumbles and gives out and Miku floats, floats, floats away, at last free, unhooked, unhinged. She breathes. And breathes, tasting hazelnut on Gumi's lips. She breathes.

Her heart extinguishes the flame.

"Merry Christmas, Miku," Gumi whispers, lacing their fingers together in the sheets. "I'm late to the party."

"Sorry I'm such a sap," Miku laughs, and she kisses Gumi again. "Merry Christmas."

.

.

 **fin**

* * *

bows _im gay_

i kinda forgot about the thrill/anxiety of actually posting stuff and now i am nervous, [b emoji]outta die as i write this (if i am so lucky). 2017 was shit. but i'm better! here's to hoping 2018 is better, too, and to me consecutively _posting things_ and not being awkward and evasive and ihhhnnnummm whatever else.

2 b fair tho i think the fandom has long forgotten me and maybe that's for the best, so hmmmmmm

thanks for the read! and apologies for any mistakes i am god fucking awful at reading never mind editing my own work


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